Topic: The word "Foreign" on antique UK glass, can it be dated?

[Frank]

No, you can use acid and Zinc but that is not effective for commercial production. I also wrote "The discovery of Electro-magnetic induction in 1831 by Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry, independently in America, led to the development of cheaper methods of producing electricity. This was first put to use in the South Foreland lighthouse on the 8th December 1858 using a French, Compagnie de l’Alliance dynamo to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen which was used to produce light by heating a block of limestone to incandescence." It is thus a slightly different approach to producing incandescence from carbon (Arc light and the carbon filaments of Swan, Edison and others.) Limelight was a lower level technology but did require electricity to be practical. For others it was vital and for the lightbulb the one other need was an effective vacuum pump. So each step was an advance in technology that relied on electricity.

Today we also have a light source borrowed from nature, using sophisticated technology, that does not require electricity to produce light. Then LED's which exploit much lower levels of electricity. Both of those do not need glass.

[krsilber]

I was thinking of theater limelights as well as the lighthouse when I wrote.  According to this Wikipedia article they were first used in Covent Garden in 1837, but it doesn't say how the gasses were produced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limelight
Sounds like a dangerously flammable lighting method, but I suppose they all were then.

Today we also have a light source borrowed from nature, using sophisticated technology, that does not require electricity to produce light.

To what are you referring here?

[Frank]

Light sticks. Used in emergency packs and as toys for kids and disco-ites,

Before dynamos, expensive batteries were the only option to create the power to separate the gases.

[Alastair]

Frank, are you aware of Edison's X-ray light bulb? It was an X-ray tube coated on the inside with calcium tungstate which fluoresces very brightly under X-rays. This was before anyone realised that X-rays are deadly.

Thomas Edison says with regard to this work: "When the X-ray came up, I made the first fluoroscope, using tungstate of calcium. I also found that this tungstate could be put into a vacuum chamber of glass and fused to the inner walls of the chamber; and if the X-ray electrodes were let into the glass chamber and a proper vacuum was attained, you could get a fluorescent lamp of several candle power. I began to make a number of these powerful lamps!

But while making these lamps, I soon found that the X-ray had affected poisonously my assistant, Mr. Dally, so that his hair fell out and his flesh commenced to ulcerate. I then concluded it would not do, and that it would not be a very popular kind of light; so I dropped it."

[Frank]

 

[krsilber]

One that ulcerated flesh "would not be a very popular kind of light" !  Now there's an understatement!

Some of that trial and error Frank was talking about, eh?

[Sklounion]

so I dropped it.

Typical, makes a mess and expects someone else to clean up after him.....
 
M
(Chaos theory can be proved, at my work-station).

[Alastair]

Edison's assistant died in 1903, one of the first "X-ray martyrs".

http://home.gwi.net/~dnb/read/edison/edison_xrays.htm

[Sklounion]

Thanks for this, Alistair.
It does make one wonder on the state of technological advancement, if today's health and safety legislation had been in place....
Regards,
Marcus

[Frank]

Edison's assistant Clarence Dally clearly has earned a place in history and his tragic misfortune probably saved many lives.

I am just posting to include his name here.